How do you stop an infinite number of suicide bombers?

June 12, 2009 10:18 AM

Can anybody elaborate on a discussion on hypothetically stopping suicide bombers that was featured on The Unit?

On the season 2 episode of The Unit entitled "Two Coins", the team meets with an anti-terrorism expert to discuss suicide bombers. The problem they are facing specifically is how can you possibly stop an arbitrarily large number of suicide bombers that are overlapping or leapfrogging to the target (first bomber blows up the most exterior barricade, the second bomber following close behind blows up the next barricade, and so on). The expert gives them a book on siege warfare, says that he thinks the Romans solved the problem, and asks them to come up with their solution overnight.

The team comes back and starts a dicussion about how the leapfrogging suicide bombers can penetrate any distance linearly, but that they cannot penetrate vertically. And then this fascinating discussion abruptly stops when they realize that two people are missing and they have to run off and try to save them.

So my question is, assuming the writers of the show didn't just make this up on their own, does anybody know more about this concept? The first thing that comes to mind is to build underground, but is that the end of the story? It's hard to see how building up solves the problem, unless you can do it on some semi-indestructible mound of earth or something. Also, can anyone recommend any good books on the subject? (I assume the one the expert told them to read was just a made up cover, and in any case I no longer have the DVD)

posted by cali59 to media & arts (7 comments total)

This is killing me, and I've never seen the unit. Take a look at this is it possible that they meant alternating barriers walls and ditches?
posted by syntheticfaith at 11:52 AM on June 12, 2009

The book he gives them in the episode is Ancient Siege Warfare by Paul Bentley Kern.
posted by lullaby at 12:10 PM on June 12, 2009

If you assume an infinite number of suicide bombers, it will be impossible to protect any individuals from becoming victims, as the population of the earth being less than infinite all will eventually become suicide bombers if they are not killed by the suicide bomb of another.

For limited numbers of suicide bombers people in airborne craft would be safe assuming that there are no suicide bombers aboard. There is the problem of refueling. Perhaps solar powered craft with onboard facilities for raising food?
posted by yohko at 3:00 PM on June 12, 2009

Syntheticfaith: I think you might be on to something. At least at first glance I don't see a way in which the scenario described (bombers in vans or trucks full of explosives) negotiates a steeply sloped ditch in any way which reliably creates a path for the next van.

Lullaby: thank you. Regrettably my local library doesn't have a copy, but I'll look into getting one.

yohko: Though I said "infinite" in the initial question, it really was about an arbitary amount. That part of the premise is there to prevent the solution of 2 walls, or 3 walls, or X walls being sufficient. Much like your extrapolation to infinity, if you build "infinite barricades", there'd no longer be an outside from which to attack.
posted by cali59 at 3:22 PM on June 12, 2009

It has always bugged me that they never finished that discussion, but I think that building up means that even in the case of an attack, the defenses of the building would be sufficiently elevated to survive the explosion and to neutralize the leapfrogging attacker.
posted by :-) at 3:34 PM on June 12, 2009

Make it so that a detonation makes further progress more difficult.

Put yourself on an island and put the first barricade in the middle of the bridge to the island. A detonation there would destroy the path to the island.

Or put it in the back of a tunnel, an explosion in the tunnel would block access further in.

These are over simplified examples that end with you trapped on an island/in a cave, but barriers can be built on the principal that blowing them up makes them more trouble than having them whole.

Stuff like Czech hedgehogs are great for this kind of thing. They're difficult to destroy without leaving a crater so big it's an equal obstacle. They don't work on people so well, but, say, a concrete wall reinforced internally with razor wire would be a much greater navigation hazard broken rather than whole.
posted by Ookseer at 5:04 PM on June 12, 2009

Use trenches or moats rather than walls. You can't really bomb a trench out of existence.

Of course you still need friendlies to be able to traverse it, so one imagines a drawbridge-type design where an initial barriacade surrounds the outside of the trench, and when attacked the drawbridge is raised.

You don't even really need barriers! Of course the problem is you'd need to make them quite deep and wide to repel human invaders although to stop, say, a van, something 5ft by 5ft would do - even better, have a shallow incline downwards on the outer face and then a vertical wall on the inner face so the attackers runs into it (and it's harder to "bridge.")

Or just a bunch of these!
posted by so_necessary at 12:56 PM on June 13, 2009